Nightly Watcher
by AkatsukiStalkers-RebelQueens
Summary: there was only ever one perfect experiment to come about from Orochimaru's practises. and the stolen Kumo girl who became the greatest stealth and destroy ninja in all the nations eventually escaped him. but when her loyalties are torn between the village and it's kage who saved her, and a group who actually accept her, what could a poor kitten do? Sand or Dawn? author: Neko Abby
1. Chapter 1

**Nightly Watcher**

Many had always thought Orochimaru's experiments had always failed. That they had always back fired. That there was always a bad end of the deal. That in reality, it was a failure.

Well, 99% were indeed failures, all of them. They died of weakness or in battle. Jutsu backfired and killed the user. Potions didn't have the right affect. Weapons used too much energy. All failures…

Except one. There was one, perfect experiment. The only one, the only perfect experiment that the ex-Sanin had ever created.

The project had been called 'code black'. A perfect assassin of the night was to be created. The techniques of a predator, the animalistic need for survival mixed with the intelligence of a human, the perfect way to travel large crowds inconspicuously. The many possible ideas for gaining information- torture, seduction, silent scope out. Sensory beyond that of human, toward chakra characteristics.

The perfect kunoichi.

And after kidnapping the perfect specimen from Kumo, she was carefully altered in DNA.

She was trained harshly from the point she left her safe-tube, age 6. She was spared no luxuries, and she slept in a cold underground cell, miles into the earth. All she had in the room was an old mattress, nothing more, not even a candle. She was locked in when she wasn't training.

At all times, including training, she had chakra absorber and controllers on her hands and feet.

Only when she was meeting her 'master' did she really wear clothes, which were a white coat, navy blue ninja pants, and a dark blue rope around her waist. The only thing other than her good clothes saved for when Orochimaru visited by her keeper –Kabuto- was a sound village headband always tied around her neck.

And in these conditions, it never mattered if she got sick. Kabuto was an expert medic. Only when he knew the illness would kill her would he give her any medical attention. She had to train through her flu when she was 9, and when she could barely get off her filthy mattress, she only received a shot and was locked away again in the damp room, without even a blanket.

Which is why by the time she was finally ANBU at the age of 12, she was tougher to beat down then an army of skilled ninja. Her immune system resisted much anything. Almost no one could present a challenge she could think of how to get out of. Her pain tolerance was huge. Her resistance and resilience were strong.

Orochimaru and Kabuto had been sure to remove all weaknesses possible. She had no fears. She was extremely intelligent. Her disguise perfect. Her acting unremarkable. She loved very little, and hated everything else. They made sure she would never succumb to 'womanly weakness', as they had put it. She would trust nothing and no one.

But, no matter how perfect of a creation the experiment was, she was never on their side.

You had to be careful when training her. As she had demonstrated many times, she wasn't sparing. She was fighting to kill. In the recent years, it took 8 ANBU level ninja to take her down when she nearly had ended Kabuto.

If you entered her room, you had to watch the shadows everywhere in the cell, for she would be waiting for you.

She had escaped when people brought her food so often, leaving only the feeder's corpse, that only the best were allowed to try and feed her- and in groups of 10 at the least.

She had gone insane quite a few times, yes. One spanned a little over a full year. Those times were very dark. But she always pulled out, remembering one thing.

The sky. Moons and suns and stars. Vast seas of blue sky, endless darkness. Peppers of stars, wisps of clouds. Thick grey blanking of rain clouds, offerings of bountiful storms and plentiful rays of sun. Blinding sparks and flashes followed by deafening thunder, the paths of sparking, swift commits. She had not seen any of these entrancing things since she was 6. But, she would see them again, one day. And that thought always brought her back from insanity's thin, hairline border.

And she would never forget her morals, no matter how hard her kidnappers tried to beat them out of her. She would never become that merciless killer, except upon these vicious people.

But there was always that one thing. She would never trust anyone. Not Kumo, her original home, who had let her get kidnapped. Not sound, because they were all just pitifully followers of a snake, mice in his cage. Not Konaha, for creating such a vile creature as Orochimaru. Not Kabuto, who kept saying Orochimaru offered safety of power.

And then Suna came.

She sat in her room, on that dirty old mattress. Thinking of the sky, as always. Not worrying about her next attempt to kill who ever trained her. Not worrying about how to escape and pass by the men who would feed her in approximately 9 hours. Not worrying if she would catch some foul disease. She only dreamed, partly numb, about a sky she had always wanted to see again.

She was 17 now. Of course, in cat form, she would appear a small kitten. It would always be that way, even when she was elderly, her kitten form would be her escape of old age.

As much as she hated to be in her human form, riddled with scars and mars, she was as normal. The cat ears and tail it always bore as add-ons of experimentation. She was only in this form, because Orochimaru was coming.

And as Kabuto always demanded, she needed to look nice.

Ice blue orbs starred at the ceiling. Then they blinked. _Chakras… dry chakras… but plentiful, many of them… dessert dwellers? One is stringy, tasteless. Another light, yet… with a sharp flavor. And a powerful, dark one…_

Her mouth parted, and she breathed deep, letting the signatures hit the roof of her mouth. It wasn't dark… it was very powerful, but its darkness was balanced. Yin and yang, night sky and day sky. Moon and sun. Rain and shine.

There was a dark, ominous silence. Then a low, crumbling rumble. Her slitted, icy eyes dilated to mere cat-scratches, feral feline in design as they glowed predatorily. Simultaneously, a large crack split the ceiling and the rumble grew louder.

In a heartbeat, the room burst into slow motion. She was a small, tiny white kitten, and with sleek skill alone, she dodged as a rock of ceiling feel onto the mattress, and she leaped delicately on top of it. With a mighty, yet cautious leap, she sailed into the air as time speed back up around her. She was through the whole, and on the crumbling floor of the hall above.

She paused. The floor was moving. Sand. All ushering in one motion, a sea of dark, swirling grains. They reeked of blood.

She clamped her jaws shut to block out the heavy, saltily metallic air. She let the moving earth carry her for a second, before it swirled in a precise circle around her paws, and the section lifted from the floor a few inches, a column that flowed through the tunnel in the opposite direction.

She was approaching the chakras now. Ahead, she breathed in the steady flow of the chakras.

Curling on her pillar, she waited. Jay-blue eyes cautiously looked around as she noted orbs of sand cocoons also floating over the river of sand. Trapped signatures of struggling sound shinobi.

She suddenly stiffened. This cave… leads to the surface. It was late at night, but there it was, a glint of light cast by stars and moon, glowing at the end.

Bunching at the end of the coulomb, she leaped onto the sand. The previous pedestal broke apart, racing in swirling strands around her hesitantly, but she was already pelting down the hall again. The ribbons of blood-reeking sand swirled around her cat form, prepared to attack if necessary.

But, she paid them no head. Her paws thundered over the sand, her own blood roaring in her ears. Her eyes sparkled, glowing brightly as they starred at the approaching arch of an exit. The faint glow was orange. _A sunset_!

It was like a dream. The sands racing at her side as she ran the tunnel. She would burst to the surface, surrounded by brilliant reds and oranges and yellows that did not exist in the dark world that had been reality in her cell.

She kept running past the tunnel exit, her eyes closed, as she stopped in the clearing beyond. She felt the sand coming under paw to create the platform, but only just barely as she took a deep breath.

Diamond blue eyes cracked open, then widened, disappointed beyond belief.

A… DOME… of the reeking, foul, rotting scented sand. It surrounded her, blocking all. No brilliant red, just a small fire to provide light, not the brilliant red bleeding over the tree tops, not the flame of the sun licking at the horizon. No creeping darkness over taking the sky with the first grains of stars dotting its onyx blackness.

Somewhere in her head. That ever delicate, fragile line, the thin sheet of glass that was the sky she loved. That image that kept her sane. It wasn't here. And, her hairline border, her flimsy grasp… snapped.

Her own, dark, neon-colored colored chakra blew up, encasing her. The cat form vanished. In its placed, a howling, spitting figure of a girl, glaring feral cat eyes that glowed in the dim fire light, incased in turquoise chakra hinted with silver and hot pink shades that was her fiery chakra.

"WHERE IS MY SKY?! WHERE IS MY NIGHT?! MY DAY?! MY SUN?! MY MOON?!" she screamed, howling to what should have been the sky she so much loved.

She held up groomed claws, laughing hysterically with miserable eyes. "WHY, ITS ALL GONE~?! WHERE HAS IT GONE?! I WANT IT BACK!"

There chakra was gone, as was her. The startled, vast amount of figures had paused around the inside of the dome. The invaders, who still with held the sky. And when she reappeared, it was in front of the three particular chakras she had felt.

A red haired teen stood in front of them, with wide, black-outlined sea foam eyes. The small kitten he had carefully lifted out. This was the same being… what?!

She grinned at him, her sharp blue eyes mismatching the face as the displayed longing, insanity, and suffering. "Did you take away my beautiful stars?!" she asked, almost sweetly. "You smell of iron… blood… earth… like the sand~! I can take what you love, too~?" it was more of a question, like she had been repeating a suggestion.

The whole clearing lit with blazing, neon green-cyan flames with blazes of the pink and silver sparkling like blossoms in its mitts. The screams of the people weld in an ear-bleeding roar, stiffening the spines of the three on the elevated piece of sand.

The blood scented red head blazed with hate and anger. But she glowered over him as she was engulfed in her colorful chakra.

Sand crashed into her side, but the chakra-pelt was unpenetrated. "Aren't the screams so glorious?!" she cried joyfully, grinning manically. "Their blood will replace the lost sunset~! I will repaint the skies that have become lost~!" she caterwauled, her voice shrill in sorrow as the bodies shriveled bellow her.

"What have you done to my people?!" the voice of the red head growled angrily, his sands hurrying to incase and protect those who were still alive, putting out the flames.

The pain-filled laugh came from her, tears streaming down her cheeks unnoticeably as she stood, unmoving, hovering in the chaos bellow, walking amongst the darkness as the fire went out.

"Didn't you know?! Being a monstrous creature in containment makes you just a little… _crazy_… crazy enough to think the sky is gone… oh, but it is~! You took it away, remember~?" her horrendous laughter echoed from the darkness, the voice heightening to a wail.

He mind was spinning unreliably fast. If the sky was gone, what was there to frame her mind?

The red head leader growled angrily, "your precious sky?! It's still there, you monster!"

Bad words. Because, she howled with joy, launching in a pillar of chakra at him, her mystical colored flames glowing dimly she pulled him off the sand, tossing him about with cries of outrage.

"Give me the moon! Give me the sun! Give me the light and the dark of the beyonds!" she screeched harshly, the sound rippling loudly throughout the dome.

The sand dome fizzled away, parting to reveal the deep blue-black of early night. A crescent of a moon broke the line of the sand's shielding walls, diamond stars doting the sky like sprinkles.

She stopped throwing around the red head, her body lowering from the chakra flames to the floor as they faded. A grin appeared on her face, the tears freezing in their tracks, as her small form reverted to the even smaller white kitten. The sharp, cyan colored eyes gleamed up at the thick belt of stars in the sky, nothing else mattering to her.

She didn't bother as the blood-smelling sand surged around her paws, welding her to the spot. She had her sky back. She was out of the cell. She was free enough.

Free, and that was how her life truly started. From the snake's den to the desserts of suna…


	2. Chapter 2

**Nightly Watcher**

In her small kitten form, she sat again in the dark. A light, harshly bright, was hanging from the ceiling like a spotlight above her. The red headed teen she had seen stood in front of her, arms cross. The blonde girl with four pig tail was behind him, and beside her was a boy with purple face paint and a weird cat-hat.

The dark ringed eyes of the red head were glaring down at her, but she only blinked back slowly with bright, glowing cyan eyes when he repeated "do you work with Orochimaru?"

The room they were in was sealed tightly, and every inch was coated in the blood-reeking sand that she twisted her face in disgust every time she breathed, keeping her jaw clamped so as to not smell the salty iron any stronger.

The stool under the light that she was sitting on was absorbing her chakra, but it barely dented her reserves of massive chakra that only some of the best sensory ninja would hint at seeing.

They had been asking 'do you work with Orochimaru?' for the past few minutes. But every time he asked, she only blinked. _Don't you know? Cats can't talk. Oh, and they definitely kill snakes when they see them, not team up with them._

It wouldn't matter if she did speak, which she could –even in cat form, though it was a little more difficult to do so- because she couldn't answer that question. She may have been the perfect experiment, but the snake's little apprentice had been sure that all secrets or even thoughts about his master could not be relayed. Though they were taking such perception at keeping her in the room, these shinobi had yet to attempt removing the sealing collar on her neck that didn't allow her to talk if she was thinking, even slightly, about Orochimaru, Kabuto, etc.

And when he asked her _again_, she only blinked once more, her tail flicked once in agitation. The long fur of it rubbed the sand, which shifted as if the movement warranted an on-coming attack. The three of the humans in the room stiffened, reaching for weapons.

Rolling her eyes in pure exasperation, she stretched to her paws. The stench of the blood was giving her one hell of a headache, these people were asking a _cat _stupid questions and expecting answers, and acted like complete wimps. They couldn't just remove the stupid collar, no, of course not. They would have removed all sorts of things of a human, why not this blasted collar?!

The sand bristled into hard layers that clawed up her furry legs, and her tail lashed impatiently. Shaking her head to calm herself a little, the tag on the collar jingled, and she sat back down, hissing at them.

The three exchanged glances as the sand relaxed, and she watched them as the red head turned back. "Do you work with-"

She didn't wait to hear the question, but bared her teeth in an angry snarl, her lashing tail fluffing up as the hair on her neck rose. _Try asking again, I'm sure THAT will help!_

The other male in the room chuckled, "yeah, I think she's getting tired of that question."

She puffed, someone finally got it. She started clawing at her neck, as if scratching, flicking at the collar. _Now, if you can figure THAT out, figure THIS out._ She thought annoyed.

The red head had glanced back at Kankuro, and when the jingling she caused from the collar echoed across the room, he turned back to her.

He stepped forward cautiously, and her tail ticked with impatience as she rolled her eyes again, before locking the icy gaze onto him.

He took another step to her side, fingering the collar's tag. He pulled it out from under the white fur, revealing two tags, thin metal scraps, and one on top the other on the jagged chain around her neck. The top read 'code black', 'experiment 22478: success' and a small Kumo sign bellow that. The second tab had a black painted seal written on it, and when he touched it, her whole body froze in paralysis. Black lettering flashed out from it, streaming first onto the chain, then across her thick white coat of fur, wrapping around her like she was bound.

"She's sealed…" he muttered, "Kankuro, do you know anything about this, how to undo it? I believe she is a captured Kumo Nin, she has the symbol."

Kankuro, the face-painted male, came forward, examining it. Dealing with seals more often than the other two, he was the best of the three at knowing how to remove it…. But he didn't.

When no one was touching the metal, the paralysis dwindled away, and she stretched onto her toes, shifting her joints, before circling on the stool, and settling into a small, fluffy ball. She was way too tired, and if they couldn't get the collar off, she couldn't answer any questions, so staying awake was pointless.

She felt her form being picked up by hesitant hands just as she was half way to sleep, but then she was completely out.

She woke up again, curled in her fluffy ball and on top of a stuffy pillow with itchy cloth. The room was completely dark, but with her vision she made out that the pillow was atop a metal desk in the center of the room. The walls were concrete stone, etched into all four were the sign of the sand village.

There was a chair just in front of her, made of the same silver metal, and the wall behind it was of some sort of thick glass she couldn't see through. A light, turned off, hung over the table directly above her, the pull-switch hanging down half the distance. A bowl of water and some sort of food on a plate beside it.

Stretching still limbs, she looked at the figure sitting in the chair. "Mew."

Glowing golden brown eyes stared down at her from a head adorn by long golden locks, tied back in a pony tail, with an odd purple diamond on her forehead. Just behind the woman, with a very noticeable large chest, stood the red head she had seen twice before, watching her with his own pale green eyes bordered with black.

The woman turned her head back to the more familiar figure, "What do you plan to do with her, Kazakage-san?" she asked briskly.

The blood-haired leader didn't move his eyes, "I need someone who can undo a seal, Hokage-san." He replied, "On the collar." He added.

The cat stiffened stretched to her toes, and puffing her fur out till she was twice her normal size. Her tail lashed, and she glared neon, blade-sharp blue eyes at the woman. The Hokage blinked in surprise, and the white fluff hissed venomously, revealing dagger-sharp teeth, and flexing glistening claws to scratch loudly on the metal table that had numbed her paws with cold.

"Is that wise?" the woman muttered to him.

"She acted calm enough with me and the other two…" he replied, looking a little surprised.

_Leaf village!_ She mentally spat, disgusted, as she indignantly turned, stalking to the scratchy pillow and sitting down with a roll of her tail, her back to them.

"I guess she doesn't like me." The woman, who smelled of sake and natural scents of travel from her recent journey to Suna, pointed out with a smirk. She was answered with a snort and agreeing flick of the tail.

Gaara sighed in mild annoyance, "it appears I have called you out here for nothing, if she won't let you close enough to remove the seal. I apologize, Tsunade-san." The fluffy cat twitched her ear, before spinning around in a flurry of anger and pouncing toward the woman, with a swipe of claws- extended with her odd chakra. _Tsunade! _She howled in rage in her head.

Sand rushed her on both sides, and she hissed as she clamped her mouth closed as the foul stench of blood swelled around her paws. With a flick of her tail and a flash of speed without so much as a smidge of her chakra to be spent, and appeared at the opposite side of the table. She spat her annoyance at the sand, glaring as the grains fell away from the loss of her support. That stuff smelled so disgusting.

The Kazakage blinked in surprise, "it also seems she let herself be captured, if she could have done that at any point." He muttered.

The blonde sighed, "it's fine, Gaara, I'll send Sakura in here to do the seal in my place, hopefully the kitten will like her better, I've taught her all I know about seals." She said, standing as she headed for the door. She looked at the mirror, and motioned for someone to come.

Tsunade left, and the red head turned to the cat with a glare, but she pointedly turned, stalking back to the cushion, settling with her paws tucked under her.

The door opened again and a small, petite girl with short, cropped pink hair and bright jade eyes made her way in. the white kitten sniffed curiously, the scent of travel was strong, like Tsunade, with underlying smells of medicine and cherry.

The girl came up to the edge of the table, and the kitten stumbled off the bed and moved toward her, sniffing strongly. The pinkette looked hesitant, having witnessed the anger toward her mentor.

At the moment, all she could care about was the lore of her smell; she could care less about her village, since she was born after the creation of the monster that had made her into such an odd creature. She had smelt nothing but dank, moist cave for years, and recently only bloody sand, and a sniff of alcohol. She had only had just a breath of fresh air before capture, but this girl, Sakura, smelt so clean and free, what a nice refresher.

The kunoichi offered a hesitant hand, and without second thoughts, she nuzzled it repeatedly, bathing in the nice, delicious smell. When you're a cat, the sense of smell is important, so don't judge the Mary-sue-creation of the snake.

Sakura giggled, looking to Gaara, as Tsunade –the creature who had worked alongside her previous captor when Orochimaru was still in the Leaf- had called her, and asked with a raised brow "she doesn't seem so bad."

The red haired teen looked absolutely surprised when she turned her white furred head to him, which he quickly warped to his blank mask as she twitched her whiskers in amusement.

"Sakura-san, will you be able to remove the seal?" he asked, gesturing to the collar as the pretty kitten sat with her tail over her small paws, watchful cyan eyes glowing like blades.

The pinkette lowered to the cat's level, gently taking the collar between two fingers. The ripple of paralyses engulfed her as the black lettering flowed over her snowy fur like it was blank canvas. With narrowed apple orbs, and a chakra-thick hand, the pinkette made a set of complex, fast-paced one-handed sings, before uttering "Release."

Nothing happened at first, and Sakura started to look doubtful, when the black lettering glowed a brief white before fading like partials drifting into a nonexistent wind. With a happy "Mew" as she rolled onto her back, she stretched her paws in all directions before sitting up with a lick of her chest fir.

Looking up at the curious pinkette, the kitten flicked her tail in gratitude. "Mew~!" she raised a paw up, and with a smile, Sakura shook it before scratching behind the cat's ear and earning a hearty purr.

Settling onto the pillow, cold ice eyes swept to Gaara. "You, sir, are an idiot." She declared in a silky, irritated voice that seemed to make both the red head and pinkette jump.

"You can talk?" Sakura gasped, whilst Gaara glared down at her small form. "What can you tell us?" he demanded.

The cat twitched her ears, looking at him boredly. "Well, let's see, I could tell you a lot… this room has no windows, you smell of sand and blood, she has pink hair, grass is gree-"

Whilst Sakura muffled giggles, Gaara cut her off with a growled, "that's not what I meant."

The cat watched as with an angry shake of his head, he and the pinkette left the room. She puffed tiredly, before sniffing at the foul slop in the bowl and taking a few licks from the water bowl. Then, the brunette and blonde she had seen twice before at the Kage's side appeared; both looking at her with cautious looks that she only rolled her eyes at.

Nosing her way back to the pillow, she used her claws to hook it and flip it over, prodding the cooler side with a testing paw before settling down on her side. Tucking her tail over her nose, she mindlessly lay with false-slowed breath to feign sleep.

"Go on, Kankuro, pick her up, Gaara needs her moved to the new cell." The female voice finally broke the silence in a hushed whisper.

"Why can't you hold her? I don't want to be murdered." The boy's voice retorted.

It earned a snort and the muttered insult, but the lighter tread of the female was heard before her body was carefully separated from the scratchy pillow by a pair of hands. Their texture was rough and warn, a battle-weary kunoichi for certain, but she should have expected as much.

"She's rather soft for a killer…" the blonde's voice came again.

"I'm not a killer…" she sniffed indignantly in reply, nuzzling her nose into the holding arm despite how they stiffened even more. And with a ting of how cross she was she added "and I'm not soft. I'm just fuzzy…" _well that doesn't sound much better…_

Flicking her tail angrily, she felt the slight tremble of suppressed laughter from the chest she was held against, and she vaguely wondered about how ridiculously easily it would be to kill the girl holding her if she indeed WAS a killer. But instead of lingering with killing thoughts, she instead wondered over images of skies- baby blue days, pale white dawn, red sunsets, grey rainy afternoons, and black nights peppered with white diamonds.

"Where are we going…?" she asked softly, opening cyan eyes just enough to see the passing grey-cement floors of the hall. "…will there be a sky?"

The wistfulness in her voice seemed to catch the male off guard, "What's with you and the sky, anyway?"

She sighed, the phrase repeated in her head the last time she ever saw her mother echoing from the depths of memories so often that the voice itself didn't seem the same anymore, only the words having survived. "When all is still and calm, and even beyond our time, the sky will be ablaze in the late, shall glow in the early. Shall shed tears when the land is parched; send sun when things are dull. Nights of cool moons will always come as sure as a cloud will bare its offerings of thunder and lightning to brighten even the darkest pouring storms."

Silence met her words, but through squinting eyes she saw the purple painted teen boy and fan-carrying teen girl exchange amazed glances. "Why were you even in Orochimaru's care?" Temari asked with a note of amazement.

She lolled her head back to stare into the face of the blonde woman. "Because I am not important." She answered blankly, as they entered another empty cell with nothing more than a mattress, and a small metal table.

They exchanged confused looks, but when they asked for an explanation, she ignored them circling down to sleep at the table.

"Gaara, I think she needs a window." Kankuro declared as the pair of siblings entered the Kage Office. "Even just a small one."

He looked up at him with a blank face. "No. She is a prisoner."

"It wouldn't hurt anyone, if it was a sky light and fully monitored on video-" Temari stared.

"No." he repeated. "She will remain in her cell." He stated firmly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Nightly Watcher**

She watched as Kankuro, as she learned his name to be in the last week of her being held captive, enter her cement-s sided cube of a room. A blankletless and no pillowed mattress, and a steel table and steel chair in the corner.

Kankuro looked around the room, suddenly surprised and horrified, not able to locate her.

She had found a set of catches in the ceiling, and with her overly large claws, she clung to them, watching him boredly. Yes, yes, it looked stupid, but she was soooooooooo bored.

She watched in amusement as he hurriedly set the metal bowl of slop and water on the metal table, and as he was about to rush out the door, she dropped down. "Chill out, I'm still here." She snorted. Her tail flicked, annoyed. Her patience was rather thin lately. If she were to be in her human form, it would be 'that time of the month'. But in cat form she was simply irritable and horny. She had self control, don't get her wrong, but yeah, she was close to clawing someone's face right now.

She leaped up to give the water bowl a few licks, then leaped down again onto the bed, flexing her claws as she worked off the cold from the metal on her paws. Kankuro leaned on the wall. The pair had built up a calm friendship, and he would hang around once in a while. "You know, you need to eat." He pointed out.

She hadn't eaten a bit of the things they had offered her- grey, brown, green, and red slob and once this pasty white, dry pellets. She was hungry. But she wasn't going to eat until she saw sky. "no." she simply replied, curling into a ball. She had been punished 8 days without food twice in Orochimaru's care. It had only been 7. Though she normally passed out from hunger on day 8. But she wouldn't give in. weak pain tolerance or not.

(Neko: is it weird that I'm such a Narutard, that every time I try to type pain- I always capitalize the P and spell it Pein? Because, really, every time. She was in Pein. His Pein was intense. I just can't stop doing it!)

Kankuro looked at her with an unreadable expression, and she knew what she looked like- thing, ragged, her eyes hollow with hunger. She looked daunt for a small kitten. Her piercing ice eyes that had made him uncomfortable even now were growing empty, only filled with the hollow of her belly. She still kept her fur groomed, but it was thin and the white was duller and not as shinny. When she lies down, she had no cushion, and that had kept her from sleeping the last two days. And with her already nocturnal activity she already didn't get much sleep, so she was exhausted. The stiff, cold bed didn't help, either.

Kankuro shook his head. "Fine. I'm still trying to convince Gaara, but he won't do anything. So, wanna tell me your name today?" he asked, forcing emotion from his voice.

"nope." She answered. Pretty hard to when you don't have one. She had told him and Temari that on day one, but neither believed her and thought she was just being stubborn. But she didn't have one. So they had tried to just call her code black, like the collar they had removed said, but every time it was said around her you were likely to die.

So, they had started to call her Watcher. She figured it was either her sharp, unnerving eyes, her careful scanning, or the way she would seem to ramble about a sky she had seen. And because she was a nocturnal kitten, it was picked up somehow that she was the Nightly Watcher, some just called her N.

She was not the nightly watcher; a girl with no name, the dangerous captive locked away who was slowly starving herself.

Kankuro tried to get conversation out of her, making a few jokes like he does, and she listened intently when he described a shooting star from the night before, but otherwise gave no reaction. She didn't want to be mean, but she had no energy to think let alone be friendly and social. She just sat on the hard bed, the cold of the room seeping into her thin fur.

When his steps faded out of the door, she stared at the place where the mattress met the wall, imagining it was the horizon. She would sit out another night, hungry and unable to sleep by the mutations in her blood.

It had been 3 more days. Temari and Kankuro had been goading her on to eat, but she had not taken a bite. She had passed out from the hunger for thirty minutes, and that had been the only sleep she received within those days. Her hanging place on the ceiling had not been touched sense, and she hadn't gone beyond the bed frame, so the pair of sand siblings had begun putting the water and food beside her. The food she was offered was steadily becoming better- she had been offered a fresh made stick of Hamatchi dango yesterday, but the dessert served in Sakura season only made her think of pink skies and the smell of open air that had been the last she had scented, that she had gotten from Sakura.

Temari had even smuggled in a pillow, setting her on top of it in hopes that she would sleep some, but now her self-digesting belly wasn't letting her get so much as a blink of sleep.

Kankuro had just left again and she hadn't spoken a word to him, not even having the energy to get off the scratchy pillow to lick a drip of water. More steps followed before the door closed again, someone meeting to talk with Kankuro outside her door, but the door closed before she could hear anyone other than Kankuro's voice or any word beyond "what-"

Her door opened again and the slightly lighter footsteps made her think of Temari come to goad her into eating again.

"Eat." The order was sharp, and it was not female, and she didn't move at all from staring at the crack between the bed and the wall as she recognized the Kazakage.

There were few quite moments to pass, and in a slightly agitated voice, he repeated, "Eat. You're dying."

"Don't care." She rasped in a cracked, hollow voice. It was the first time in the last two days she had spoken. First time in 5 days it was more than one syllable.

"I offer you better food then a prisoner deserves. Eat it." He ordered.

Her droopy, dull, half lidded eyes remained where they were, and her throat burning from the two words didn't answer. What had she done to be a prisoner? You'd be a little insane like she had been when you first came out of that cave, too.

"_eat._" He ordered again.

She somewhat lifted her chin a fraction of a centimeter from the pillow, turning her dusty grey muzzle toward him, and set it down with a slow blink of pain.

She couldn't feel her paws from the cold. Her stomach was being torn with long claws of hunger. Her skin crawled with the agony she felt, and her head was clouded with depression.

He, however, looked nicely groomed, fit, and there was the color of warmth in her his skin. He would be well fed; his food gourmet not because they wanted to tempt him because he was starving, but because he could have it when he chose. He wasn't locked in a cement room.

She let her head hang a little lower, looking at the grey floor. Go back to your penthouse and let me starve.

"Why are you so stubborn? Eat the food." He demanded.

With shaky legs, she hesitantly stood, before tumbling down the pillow and standing again. She plodded toward the two dishes, sushi in one and water in the other. She took two, long licks of water, before meekly pawing the bowl away as it fell of the mattress. Not enough energy to go back, she curled where she was, ignoring the muttered anger.

"You stubborn creature, you're going to kill yourself." He growled in annoyance. She lifted her head to him, where he was cleaning up the sushi, and sensing her once shocking now dull eyes, he looked back.

In that one, silent look, his sea foam eyes grew wide, and she realized- she was so weak, she could no longer retain her feline form, and she was shifting back to her human form.

She never showed people what she looked like. Never. If she could stop her reverting form, she would, but she was barely holding her head up, only just managing to maintain consciousness as the tiny, furry body grew. White fur swarmed into skin, deathly pail from a life of living underground, her lips blue and no color in her cheeks from cold.

Amazing, sleek bright ginger hair to her mid back, with the same, amazingly sharp blue eyes. She was so thin, every rib visible, too thin for the damage to have been done within the time frame of the raid in the cave. She had her tail and cat ears still, both the orangey-ginger of her hair.

Immediately even colder without her fur, she curled into a ball, simultaneously covering herself, though she could careless in her dying state what he saw. "Then I will die." She rasped.

"no." he retorted back, the metal bowl was put in front of her, the water inside swishing. "Drink."

She drank a little, but then put it back down. "You need more than that." Gaara demanded, but she ignored him. He seemed completely angry now, "what is wrong with you?! Why are you so eager to die?!"

Her head lolled, no energy to pick it up, and she glared at him. "I'm not a killer, you bastard. This is your fault." She tucked her head away again, hearing his scoff of disbelief.

"My fault?! You ARE a killer! You killed my shinobi!" he shot back and she heard him slam the metal bowl on the ground and kick it.

"Didn't you know? Being a monstrous creature in containment makes you just a little… _crazy_… crazy enough to think the sky is gone… oh, but it was. You took it away, remember?" She repeated herself from the night they had first scene each other.

She starred into his eyes blankly, "and look now. You've locked me up like Orochimaru." Her eyes narrowed, "your keeping me alive just for information, you deprive me of the one thing you know I love. You allow your own sibling into this room to feed me, and with Orochimaru I killed everyone who entered my room and were more powerful than those two combined, yet I have not laid a claw on your sister and brother. You're the same kind as the snake." She snarled, spitting out the last part.

As her head curled into her ball again, Gaara starred in complete shock at the ginger haired girl. She looked his age, yet so small and empty. It was utterly stupid she wasn't eating.

And then THAT. That speech or another. No, he didn't quite forgive her for killing the 78 men. But there was horrifying truth to her words. He was NOT a monster like Orochimaru. But he was doing the same thing the snake had done.


	4. Chapter 4

**Nightly Watcher**

She wasn't sure how long she had been in the dark of her unconscious. It certainly had been voluntary sleep; the water he had tried to get her to drink more of had an unusual taste in it.

What really mattered to her, though, is that she couldn't see, or move. She had returned to her feline position, but there was something around her eyes and she couldn't see past a black screen of nothingness. Her limbs were numb, most likely from the liquid that made her sleep, but it was gradually wearing off.

Twitching a forepaw, she found a needle in her skin. That's why she could be in her cat form; they were giving her things to keep her from dying.

With a burst of her overly-hot, flame like chakra, the eye covering burned away into a puff of smoke, and she opened her striking cyan eyes to the room. They grew wide as she struggled to pick up her head.

Deep black between the specks of bright, white stars marred her vision, blocking out the rest. An entire wall was the window, and over the sands of the dessert she could see endless midnight black-blue sky, a wisp of almost invisible cloud here and there, and she could see an amazing, white circle of moon, a slit of it gone with the waning cycle.

In short, sky.

The glass of the window was so insignificant it didn't need to exist, and it probably didn't as far as she cared. Unable to walk, she simply sat on an unusually plush bed for a prisoner, resting her head down, and staring out at its depths.

So encased in its cavities of black between stars she didn't notice, nor would she care about the ANBU guard with a mask of a cat sitting at the door, or the one with the bear settled on the other side of the room near the window. Or, the red haired Kazakage standing at the side of her bed, until he spoke.

"Are you going to continue to starve yourself now, N?" he asked, and she turned her head to notice his presence, and she shrugged, "it's not as likely."

He nodded, "good, now will you answer some questions?" she nodded, and he blinked, before asking in a serious tone: "you don't work with Orochimaru, so who?"

She stared up at him for a long time from the tiny, white, and grey detailed furry body. "Gaara, the only people I have had contact with since being locked away at age 5, is Orochimaru, my kidnapper, and his goons like Kabuto. I have no allies, only enemies."

"Kidnapped from where?" he asked, still looking at her with that emotionless face.

"Kumo." She spat, that stupid village couldn't protect a 5 year old from the center of its village.

He nodded, reminded of the village symbol from the collar. "So he kidnapped you for attributes of power, like your chakra and… this?" he questioned, motioning to her cat body, not quite sure what to call that.

"No, he chose me for two reasons: first, because I couldn't fight back while I was so young, a fresh slate he wanted to mold. Secondly," she added, a repeat of what she had said to the other sand siblings: "I am not important. No one was going to look for me, fight for me, or even investigate what happened to me."

She turned cold eyes on Gaara, "a boy born with a similar Kekkei Genkai to this ability to shape shift, who's DNA was used to help create me when he was only 2. He would have been 4 this year. He went missing from Ame. An 18 year old man from Suna, a civilian, was kidnapped from mist. His unusual heritage gave him an odd chakra, but because he was never a ninja, it was untapped and unknown. He also went missing." She listed, "these are the other people who all died, their villages gave them no care, and because of that, I was born.

And, _Kazakage_, a 22 year old woman went missing from Suna a year ago. The village did not search for her. She was taken by Kabuto, and she was an attempt to re-create me, because I was the first test, and though she failed, the point stands. She went unnoticed." The look she was giving him bore an intense hate, founded through her anger of the people who let the small slip away unnoticed. "This was code black: the mission that proved you should be afraid of the dark, where the unimportant vanish into the shadows."

The red haired teen stood there, stunned. 'Code black' sounded like a nightmare. "It sounds horrible, indeed." He murmured agreement. Then he shook his head. "Temari and Kankuro both tell me you have not lain a claw to them, so for good behavior, one request is to be granted. I assume this is well enough?"

The kitten murmured agreement, setting her head on her paws.

"One last question." Gaara asked her, and she murmured er agreement. "Why did you allow yourself caught?"

She paused, turning her numbing cyan eyes to him. "The cat is completely solitary… I like my solitude, but I'm not a cat, I am a person. I assumed where I went would be fairer than Orochimaru since you were so protective of the shinobi, even though I only killed a select few purposely."

"Select few?"

"The ones who didn't stop the ones who fell. They were selfish. And though I agree, it wasn't a good idea to kill them… but hey, could you do better when you go insane?"

Gaara looked at her with this suspicious look, and the cat looked back at him, curious for a moment.

Then she flicked her tail, "ah, I almost forgot, Gaara Subaku, Chinchuriki!" she sniffed, giving him a look of remembrance. "You DO know what I mean about going nuts and killing without trying." She spat.

"Silence." He snapped angrily, the Kazakage looking thoroughly angry.

The cat sat up, giving him a look. "Look, buddy, I'm only trying to prove the point that I'm pleading insanity. You should know that a child born only to be a weapon that grows without knowing anything but hatred is destined to be a little… temperamental and nuts." She hissed at him, flicking her tail accusingly.

Then, as if to totally rebuke what she had just said, she turned her back on him, "however I happen to be rather nice when I choose to be, Gaara-san."

Said boy shook his head, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Fine, fine, I can see your point. Last question."

"You already said that." She pointed out.

Completely ignoring her, he continued his question. "What is your name, unless you expect me to call you nightly watcher from now on."

"How many times will I have to say it to all you brainless sand siblings? I don't _have_ a name."

"Why not?" he questioned.

The cat gave him a simple you-are-not-that-stupid look. "Uh, because I _don't_." how could she be expected to remember a name no one ad called her by since she lived in Kumo?

"Then I guess we will continue with one of the names you have been given here. So pick one, they have N, Night, The Nightly Watcher, N-W, or Watcher." Gaara listed absently, wondering who the idiot was that came up with N-W, no one would use a name of two letters when they could just use one.

"I'm fairly used to people calling me all of those. So then my name is 'The', middle name 'Nightly', and Surname 'Watcher'. The rest are nicknames." She decided, not caring less at all about what they called her as long as it wasn't code black like they once tried.

"Fair enough. Now be sure to eat." He ordered her, before leaving with the ANBU.

Unable to get up from being so tired, the tiny body turned its head to see a small bowl of broth had been placed on her bed before he had left. It was devoured with rapid, ravenous quick laps, and the bowl was licked spotlessly clean as she curled up on the soft pillow on the bed.

N faded to sleep, staring with a kitten smile at the wide open space known as sky beyond her window.


	5. Announcement! (not part of story)

**announcement to all readers from Neko-sama**

Syrian Arab Revar  
Mauritius  
Bulgaria  
Kuwait  
Bosnia and Herzegovina

you see those places i listed? those are all places i have NEVER EVEN HEARD OF.

yet somehow, i have at least 2 readers following me from those places.

my precious babies i love you all so very much. after 2 months of inactivity you still comment within the first 10 minutes of a story TWELVE TIMES.

there are some people i would like to personally promote.

you people have praised the crummy song lyrics i made up in some of them, even one of my precious extra cup-cake-y followers sang it and put it on youtube,

_Reira Honjo._

you people give me and the Rebel Queens the comments of a lifetime, hilarious and praising and detailed and perfect.

_MinaBlahBlahBlahAnimeFan_ for your hilarity and constant reviews.

_Babybroant_ for being a dedicated reader.

_Guest: Connie Davis_ for being so attached to my stories.

_Akatsukilover15_ for being a complete cookie for taking on my poor orphaned story 'Yours Truely'.

_KarrineWinchester_ for your frequent reviews, i can count on your appearance.

_asredwer_ fore your honesty and help in spotting my mishaps

_moonloonstar _for your detailed reviewing in 'speechless' and other, i love to read those longer reviews so much!

i love you all, as well as all my others who take the time to AT LEAST type 'write soon' or 'love it'. it makes my day when every two weeks i get to come and see your beautiful words and i read them ALL. i even respond once in a while, so if you ask a question just stick it in a review and it SHALL be answered!

and remember how much i love you ALL!


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